ASH PDF Studio Help

Filling in forms

When a document has fillable fields, you can type straight into them. The values are written into the file when you save.

Fill in a form

  1. Open the document. A bar appears under the toolbar: "This document has fillable fields", with the number of fields.
  2. Click a field and type, tick a box, choose an option, or pick from a list.
  3. Press Tab to move to the next field. The order follows the page, top to bottom, then left to right.
  4. Save the file as usual (see save and print).
Field type How you fill it
Text Type. Multi-line fields accept line breaks.
Check box Click to tick or untick.
Radio buttons Click one option.
Drop-down list Choose one entry.
List box Choose one or more entries.

Read-only fields cannot be changed. Signature and button fields are shown as unsupported.

Note

If you type a character the standard PDF font cannot hold, a warning under the field says it will appear as "?".

The forms bar

Button Effect
Highlight fields Shows or hides the light-blue shading on fields
Flatten form… Makes the form permanent (see below)
× (Hide this bar) Closes the bar for this document

The same actions are on the Tools menu: Highlight fields, Reset form and Flatten form…. They are only available when the document has a form. The Forms tool on the toolbar shows the same buttons. In the app: Help ▸ Show me

Reset a form

Choose Tools ▸ Reset form to clear every field you can edit. Read-only fields are left alone.

Flatten a form

  1. Choose Tools ▸ Flatten form….
  2. Read the warning and click Flatten.

Flattening draws the current values into the pages and removes the fields, so they can no longer be edited. Keep a copy of the original first.

Tip

To make drawn markup permanent instead, see flatten annotations.

Limits